E3SM-Project / E3SM-Project/scream

Fix PRAIN=precip_total_tend in P3?

Open
#943 10 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Dominant language
No language data
Stars
79
Forks
54
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

I think precip_total_tend (known as PRAIN in pbuf and output) is supposed to be rain + snow production (i.e. the things that create rain without things like evaporation that deplete rain). It is mistakenly(?) labeled "Total precipitation (rain + snow)" in several places in the code.

I *think* it is only used as a diagnostic output. I also think it is defined incorrectly in P3:
https://github.com/E3SM-Project/scream/blob/4575d088af4d87cf44f4b7fbcf8eae5e965d5024/components/eam/src/physics/cam/micro_p3.F90#L862
. qccol is collection of qc by ice - I'm not sure why it has such an archaic name. This equation looks to me to be ignoring most sources of ice (like vapor deposition, etc). Is precip_total_tend supposed to just be conversion from qc to qr+qi? Why would anyone want that?

Because PRAIN/precip_total_tend seems to just be used for output and has a definition that I can't understand even when I look at its source code, I suggest just deleting it. Does anyone know why we shouldn't?

@AaronDonahue , @hassanbeydoun , @JS-WRF-SBM - do you have any opinion? Have we discussed this before?

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.